Challenging Dante (A Bride for a Billionaire 4)

A gas fire flamed in the grate and Dante examined his surroundings, pausing to glance at a large collection of family photos arranged on a side table. ‘There’s a lot of children in your family,’ he commented.

Topsy breathed in deep. ‘Dante?’ He swung round, stunning green eyes locking to her with sudden unexpected intensity, the power of his compelling attraction washing over her like a potent drug. ‘Will you please tell me what you’re doing here in London?’

‘I had to see you,’ he declared.

‘But we have absolutely nothing to say to each other,’ she reasoned in a voice strung tight with the strain of self-discipline.

‘I care about you, Topsy,’ he breathed thickly.

‘Well, you have a funny way of showing it,’ Topsy told him, unimpressed, indeed resenting that statement when his lack of concern for her feelings had been paraded in front of her at the ball. ‘Until tonight I don’t believe you’ve ever told me anything really personal about yourself. I even had to find out that you were once married from your mother. We had fun as you once said but it stopped being fun and I want out...I am out.’

His spectacular bone structure was rigid below his bronzed skin. ‘When I mentioned my father tonight, it was to lessen your discomfort over your mother’s arrest. I’m not used to talking about myself. I’m not used to sharing private matters with people.’

‘Which only underlines how right I was to walk away.’

‘But I’m not the only one of us who chose to keep secrets,’ Dante countered suddenly, his green eyes ablaze with sudden condemnation.

‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ Topsy said defensively.

Dante pulled a small envelope from his pocket and extended it to her. ‘Perhaps this will explain.’

Brow indenting, Topsy grasped the envelope. It felt like a greetings card but it wasn’t her birthday. She tore it open to extract the card and flick it open.

Welcome to the family. Vittore.

Dante crossed the room to look over her shoulder and read the same message.

‘What does he mean?’ Topsy whispered, afraid to believe that those words meant what she hoped they meant.

‘The DNA tests were a match...’ He skimmed her with a cool telling scrutiny. ‘Yes, Vittore told me that you thought he might be your father but that you only approached him the night of the ball. Were you ever planning on sharing that possibility with me?’

Topsy was reeling, both from the news that the DNA testing had confirmed that Vittore was indeed her father and the wording of the card that seemed to offer to include her in the family circle. It seemed too good to be true. ‘How does Vittore feel about it?’

‘Since he’s had a couple of days to absorb the shock of your existence, he seems pleased. He’s also broken the news to my mother. She was certainly disconcerted when he explained about his unfortunate experience with your mother years ago, but my mother seems to have spent every moment since finding delightfully sentimental comparisons between you and her husband,’ Dante revealed with an edge of derision. ‘She says you have the same smile. Frankly I’ve never noticed.’

‘I’m so glad your mother’s not been distressed by all this coming out,’ Topsy commented breathlessly. ‘And of course you won’t recognise any similarity in smiles when Vittore so rarely smiles around you. Why would he smile? Do you expect him to bask in your disapproval?’

‘You realise this makes you my stepsister?’ Dante prompted with a sardonic twist of his handsome mouth, ignoring her admonition with regard to his attitude towards his stepfather. ‘And that the child my mother carries will be a half-sibling to both of us?’

Topsy smiled, thinking that over, and nodded. ‘You have no idea what it’s like not to know who your father is, particularly when your mother is as uninterested as Odette. Finding out the truth meant a lot to me, and Vittore and your mother are handling this in such a positive way. I’m very, very lucky,’ she conceded gratefully.

‘The information you required from your mother that persuaded you to work as an escort for an evening,’ Dante recounted in a flat tone that could not hide his disapproval. ‘Was that information the name of your father?’

‘Yes,’ Topsy confirmed, hating the fact that for the first time they were talking almost like polite strangers. Yet she wondered what other relationship they could possibly hope to establish in the wake of their unfortunate fling. At the same time she knew she would have to work on her own feelings because Vittore was her real father and Dante would always be a part of Vittore and Sofia’s life.

In pursuit of that objective, she added in a rush, ‘I grew up believing that another man, who lived abroad, was my father. I only met him a couple of times but when I was eighteen I discovered that he wasn’t my father at all.’

‘And finding out who was was so important to you that you took a job with my mother...for precisely what purpose?’ Dante prompted tautly.

‘I wanted the chance to get to know Vittore a little before I decided whether or not to approach him and then everything got so complicated.’ She sighed with a wry roll of her big dark eyes. ‘Before I came to Italy I hadn’t thought anything through. I saw the job offer on the castle website and decided it was a heaven-sent opportunity. But once I arrived, there they were—Sofia and Vittore, a newly married happy couple—and I was scared that if I did turn out to be Vittore’s daughter, it would damage their marriage.’

‘It could have done,’ Dante conceded reflectively. ‘Fortunately my mother isn’t threatened by the discovery that her husband has an adult daughter but probably more important in this case is the fact that she already likes you, so you’re not an unknown quantity she is being forced to accept.’

‘Your mother’s still been very generous,’ Topsy responded.

‘But I was quite right to be suspicious of your motives in coming to work for her. You accuse me of keeping secrets but really you kept many more secrets from all of us,’ Dante condemned grimly. ‘You came into my home and earned my mother’s trust on false pretences.’

‘That’s not a fair criticism,’ Topsy objected sharply.

‘You know it is. I can understand the reasoning behind your masquerade but you also concealed who your family were and any hint that you were from a privileged background.’

Topsy flushed because that was more or less a true charge. ‘I wasn’t born into a privileged background. In fact there was nothing privileged about my life until Kat met Mikhail and married him. That was when everything changed and suddenly I was staying in a country mansion with servants at the weekends and Kat was buying me designer jeans.’

Someone rapped on the door of the lounge and Dante went to answer it.

‘Would you like coffee?’ Dante enquired over his shoulder. ‘Or anything to eat?’

‘No, thanks.’ She didn’t think she could get any sort of a drink past her tight throat and she was angry that Dante had put her on the defensive by reminding her that she had been downright dishonest when she deliberately took a job working for his mother simply to get close to Vittore. The acknowledgement embarrassed her. She hadn’t set out to hurt anyone and, luckily, nobody had been hurt and surely that should be the bottom line that judged her behaviour.

‘I wasn’t honest about my family circumstances because I didn’t want anyone questioning why I should need the job in the first place. I was als

o trying to take a break from my sisters and their expectations for a while and be independent,’ she explained unwillingly, watching an ebony brow quirk. ‘I love them all but they do meddle a lot in my life. I’ve never been allowed to make my own decisions. My sisters made the decisions for me, right down to who I dated and who I didn’t date.’

‘I wouldn’t have even got on the list of potentials,’ Dante quipped.

‘Don’t kid yourself, Dante.’ Topsy wrinkled her slightly snub nose. ‘You’re rich and successful and those are exactly the qualities my sisters and their husbands respect.’

‘Kusnirovich knows who I am and he was ready to throw me out of his house tonight,’ Dante observed grimly, his passionate mouth tightening into a hard line. ‘There was neither respect nor acceptance in my reception. In all fairness, you’re misjudging your family, cara mia. The instant you accused me of having another woman, it didn’t matter who I was or what I was worth, they didn’t want me anywhere near you.’

Topsy could see the truth of that for herself and her shoulders drooped, emotional exhaustion settling in as she sank down wearily on a well-padded sofa, allowing her rigid spine to sink into the cushions. ‘I was tired of my family watching my every move, trying to fix me up with a job they picked, and that was another reason to come to Italy, except Mikhail tracked me down there as well.’

‘They care about you,’ Dante reasoned, oddly hesitant in his delivery, his accent purring along every syllable. ‘As do I.’

Topsy froze, her small face rigid. ‘I don’t want to talk about Cosima. I still don’t know what you’re even doing here. Are you in London on business?’

‘No. I’m here solely to see you,’ Dante delivered.

‘Why did you get married at twenty-one?’ she asked him abruptly, determined to steer him off that subject lest it upset her and she let herself down by getting emotional. Attack, she thought, was the best part of defence. ‘And why did you never mention that you had been married?’